One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977)
Agnès Varda’s ode to female friendship and women’s liberation traces the bond between two young women over a dozen years, beginning in 1962. That bond is forged when Apple (Valérie Mairesse), a 17-year-old with a fiercely independent streak, secures the money needed for her new friend Suzanne (Thérèse Liotard), an overwhelmed mother of two toddlers, to have a safe abortion — across the French border, in Switzerland. “Free will is philosophy in action,” the feisty teen proclaims, and when she and Suzanne meet again, 10 years later, they’re both participating in a courthouse protest over an abortion trial. Made by one of cinema’s great innovators, this melodrama with songs (lyrics by Varda) unfolds against the political awakening of the 1960s and ’70s, when gender roles and the idea of family were being questioned and reinvented. Varda’s feminist vision embraces love, whimsy, joyful bohemia and tenderness no less than healthy anger over injustice.
